Alibaba, Tencent clash in cyberspace

China's lnternet titans have declared a "virtual" war on each other's marketing services for online vendors, as each seeks to capitalize on its respective mobile Internet system.

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has announced it will block marketing messages sent from the WeChat platform, a mobile social networking application developed by Tencent Holdings Ltd, the nation's largest Internet company by market capitalization.

It was Alibaba's latest counter-offensive against Tencent, which a week ago began to ban public accounts that were mostly registered by Alibaba vendors, who were disseminating commercial advertisements via WeChat.